Vanity Fair’s annual spread of beautiful famous ladies in gowns has been published, and at first glance it seems like an ideal distraction from the burbling pit of autocratic goo into which America has cannonballed. The Annie Leibovitz photo is free of all the bad stuff—pores, men, Pepe the Frog insignias—and packed with nice things like glitter, hairless bodies, and homoerotic tension.
Viewers would be forgiven for puzzling over a few of the faces. “Every year this comes out, and every year there are at least two or three faces on that cover who clearly have excellent publicists,” Slate culture writer Aisha Harris remarked to me when she saw the photo. How come both Fanning sisters are there, disproportionately representing a single gene pool? Why Dakota Johnson, whose next Fifty Shades of Grey movie is sure to be bleh and isn’t even out yet? And for that matter, why are 18 percent of the cover models named Dakota?
As a journalist, I’d be remiss if I didn’t interpret this yearly to-do as what it undoubtedly is: a veiled commentary on the state of the union and its rapid decline. Two blond sisters? Surely a nod to White House advisor Steve Bannon’s sympathy to claims of white genetic superiority. Two Dakotas? An allusion to the Dakota Access Pipeline, the much-protested planned oil pipeline through Native American lands that Trump intends to advance.
In the full spread, Ruth Negga appears to be the star of the show, resplendent and relaxed in a gorgeous gold gown that has her looking like an Oscar statuette. Negga stars in Loving, a film about the titular interracial couple that successfully fought anti-miscegenation laws all the way to the Supreme Court. Negga’s prominence on the cover appears to be a declaration against racist policies and a forecast for courts that enforce civil-rights protections. Phew—we can breathe easy!
BUT WAIT. Further investigation reveals that Negga is behind the cover’s fold, relegating her to the inside of the magazine until the page is manually extended. On the actual front cover, the eye is drawn to Amy Adams, who was surprisingly left out of the Best Actress category this year. Adams’ head covers the bottom part of the title’s Y, leaving her with two spikes growing out of her hair like devil horns. Sound familiar? Our dear president was saddled with the same Satanic typeface issue in his Time “Person of the Year” cover, leading many to wonder whether a scheming designer with anti-fascist tendencies had hidden a message in plain sight. One wonders whether Vanity Fair knows something the rest of us don’t. Was Adams bumped from the nominee list by a Trump operative because she once starred in a movie about nominally empowered women proposing marriage to men? Or is Adams a Trump operative, as evidenced by her participation in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, a bald-faced pander to the anti-French sentiment of NASCAR America?! Speak to us, designers.
If there is a symbol of opposition in this vanity spread of fair people, it is the three black women in sparkles, shining bright in an Oscars season that’s a little less “so white” but that still represents an industry that neglects complex Asian characters. A thread of resistance can also be found in the spread of Greta Gerwig’s legs, which would take up far more than her fair share of a seat on public transportation, and her not-unsexual chemistry with Janelle Monae. If I can live in the benevolent shadow of their gaze for the next four years, I might just survive.
